


We Need to Talk About Tywin

by catherineflowers



Series: We Need To Talk About ... [4]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst and Feels, F/M, Past Abuse, Past Rape/Non-con, Past Underage Sex, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-23
Updated: 2018-05-23
Packaged: 2019-05-13 01:54:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,502
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14739848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/catherineflowers/pseuds/catherineflowers
Summary: He comes back into their bedroom, his phone in his hand. He looks white. His jaw tight.“My father,” he says. “He – he died.”





	We Need to Talk About Tywin

**1\. Brienne**

Something bad has happened.

She’s sitting up in bed, in the dark, at 3am, listening to her husband on the phone in the next room. 

Jaime’s talking in a hushed voice, and she can’t hear exactly what he’s saying, but she knows something isn’t right. She caught a glimpse of his phone screen as it rang – the caller is his brother Tyrion. It’s been months since Jaime talked to him – he doesn’t know they are back in town, he doesn’t know they are married, or that Jaime took her name.

He doesn’t know Brienne is pregnant, either. No one does but her and Jaime. She’s only five weeks gone – their baby little more than a cluster of cells in her belly. But precious. Exciting.

Their baby. She’s not sure if she’s delighted or terrified – they’ve just got back to the city after six idyllic months in their villa only to discover a wedding night present. Not exactly unplanned, but sooner than they’d anticipated. Sooner than she thinks Jaime is ready for.

He comes back into their bedroom, his phone in his hand. He looks white. His jaw tight.

“My father,” he says. “He – he died.”

**2\. Jaime**

Jaime sits down on the end of the bed. It’s snowing again outside, and he’s only dressed in boxers. He starts to shiver.

“Are you okay?” Brienne asks.

He doesn’t know how to answer that. He shrugs.

“How did he die?”

“He, uh – car - car accident. Earlier this evening. Black ice, Tyrion thinks. He went off the road. Off - off a bridge.”

Brienne clearly doesn’t know what to say. She offers her hand and he takes it awkwardly, having to reach over his body with his left. He doesn’t know what to say, either. Doesn’t know what to feel.

**3\. Brienne**

He’s freezing, so she makes tea. Hot and sweet, with a pile of toast and jam. Sweet things are supposed to help with shock, she thinks. When she brings it in, he’s back in bed, propped up on his usual mound of pillows. Dry-eyed. Chewing his knuckles.

“When’s the funeral?” she asks.

He shrugs again. “Don’t know.” 

She passes him his tea. Settles down on the bed beside him and wraps herself in a thick blanket. He’s quiet, but he’s tense. Muscles tight in his belly and thighs, his eyes feverish. He sips his tea.

“I probably couldn’t go. Restraining orders and all that. Cersei …”

She nods.

“You should get back to sleep,” he says, his eyes on her belly with the ghost of a smile. “You need to look after yourself. And Jaime Jr.”

“I need to look after Jaime Sr, too.”

“I’m okay,” he whispers. “I was just thinking. It’s been four years since I spoke to my father.”

“I know.” 

Brienne knows what he means. When push had come to shove, his father had sided with Cersei and hung him out to dry. Jaime had gone from golden son to black sheep in an instant.

She knows he has grieved for that relationship for a long time. Actually grieving Tywin Lannister seems almost redundant.

**4\. Jaime**

He’s frightened of talking about his father. His father is too big to talk about.

So Jaime drinks his tea, eats his toast and then makes love to Brienne instead, as gently as he knows how, getting them both close to the edge and then holding back, time and time again until they are both incoherent with pleasure in each other’s arms. Murmuring and sighing. Eyes holding each other’s eyes. Counting the snowflakes falling past the window until he has control again.

He knows her body so well – he can hold her on the edge of bliss for hours even with just his clumsy left hand between their bodies to bring her pleasure. When, eventually, he lets her crash over the edge with just the merest circling of his fingertips, her cries are so loud they make his ears ring.

Wherever Tywin Lannister is now, he wonders if he can see them. If he can see how much Jaime loves Brienne, how much she’s changed him. Would that even matter to him? Would it have given him any sort of paternal happiness?

Jaime comes inside Brienne thinking about his father’s cold gaze, his tight, disapproving jaw. Clenching Brienne’s right hand in his left, holding her hips hard against his with the stump of his right.

Life, he thinks, life with Brienne, is a life worth living. Tywin Lannister wouldn’t even recognise Jaime Tarth.

**5\. Brienne**

Jaime collapses on top of her, breathless and shuddering. She caresses the top of his head with her lips, strokes his sweat-damp hair with her fingers.

They should get up and shower, but they don’t. They should get back into the bed instead of lying sideways across it, but they don’t. They hold each other wordlessly, the sweat cooling on their skin in the frigid winter air, until they fall asleep.

**6\. Jaime**

In the morning, Jaime braves the snow to get breakfast. It’s a Sunday and it’s what he and Brienne always do on Sunday. Eat. Drink. Sex, most often. He doesn’t want to change that just because his father’s dead.

His father is dead.

He sees it on the front of the newspapers he passes on his way to the coffee shop. He sees it on TV screens in shop windows and behind the swinging doors of bars. He sees the crumpled car, the damaged bridge. He sees his father’s implacable stare.

His father is dead.

He buys bagels. Doughnuts. Bacon. Coffee. Magazines. A warm beanie hat, just on impulse.

His father is dead.

He stops outside a shop – he can see the TV inside.

They have news cameras outside the family home – the home where he grew up. Aides and bodyguards are interviewed. Tyrion is harassed as he climbs the steps. Grim-faced and black-suited. A couple of cousins – Lancel he thinks and another one he doesn’t know the name of – are giving interviews with sombre faces. His uncle Kevan almost slips on the snow on the front path. The clip of his stumble is played repeatedly.

Vultures circling already. Waiting to pick at his father’s corpse. Coming for the rest of the family.

What will happen now? He can imagine the fight to the death between Cersei and Tyrion over the money. He can imagine how much the media will salivate over the details. His father will turn in his grave at the loss of Lannister dignity.

The news reel starts again, showing that same photograph of Tywin. Sharp-cut three-piece suit. Crimson tie. Pale cold eyes that still, even now, make Jaime’s spine prickle.

His father is dead. Jaime walks away from the window. 

It doesn’t seem possible that something so mundane as black ice could have killed Tywin Lannister. It seems too pedestrian – almost absurd. Tywin Lannister should have gone out gloriously, somehow, though Jaime can’t think of a suitable death. 

For the first time since Tyrion’s call, Jaime feels a pang. Not for Cersei, not to be back with her, but to be a Lannister. Standing shoulder to shoulder with the rest of the family, lions together. _Hear Us Roar._

But then – Brienne. Her face is so clear in his mind, homely and blushing in the early morning light. Her sparkling blue eyes holding his, a little smile on her lips. She’d handed him the pregnancy test without a word, had kissed his own words out of his mouth.

That’s the future he wants – hang the rest of it. Hang the lions and the gold and the glory. He knows his father’s vaunted legacy is rotten to the core.

A little further round the block, he passes a baby store. Cribs and strollers and toys. Just inside, he spots a stack of blankets, brightly coloured. Just right for winterborns. He’d never bought a thing for his children before – he’d never dared. An avuncular voucher or a bit of money in a card was all he’d done.

He buys a blanket, just because he can. A bright blue one, bright as Brienne’s eyes. He wants to see her smile when she sees it, he wants her to imagine wrapping their baby in it, he wants her to know how excited he is.

He wraps it up and puts it in his bag and heads back home.

**7\. Brienne**

He knocks at the door. It’s not unusual – their door can get a little sticky and it’s hard for him to unlock with just one hand.

Brienne is dripping wet from the shower, wrapped in a towel with another one about her head. Calls out that she’s coming and pulls it open. Steps back into the hall to let him in without noticing it isn’t him.

It’s a woman.

Brienne knows who she is. Even though she’s never met her, never seen a photograph, she knows this woman well. She’s Jaime. 

Jaime’s hair, Jaime’s eyes, Jaime’s tone of skin. The shape of her lips, the shape of her hands. The tilt of her head. The rhythm of her breathing. Brienne is dumbstruck. It’s uncanny.

“Who are you?” asks Cersei.

Brienne can’t find her voice. She stands there, dripping on the carpet, big and pink and naked underneath the tiny towel. “Brienne,” she manages at last.

“Are you the housekeeper?”

She shakes her head. Of course she’s not. She’s naked in a towel. “I’m Jaime’s wife.”

For a second, a tiny second, Cersei looks like she’s been slapped. Then she looks like she might laugh. “I want to see my brother.”

Brienne shakes her head. “He’s not here.”

“Where is he?”

“He’s out.”

“Call him. Get him back.”

“You have a restraining order against him.”

“Our father is dead!”

“Jaime won’t want to see you.”

She towers over Cersei, has twice her bulk, could snap her in two. But those eyes – those green mesmeric eyes! They are terrifying, a wasteland of pitiless void. Brienne sees how Jaime had sunk his life and his heart into making this woman happy and had come from her a rotting corpse – handless, lifeless, without his reason.

Cersei’s lips curl into something that almost resembles a snarl. She doesn’t believe Brienne – that much is obvious. She can’t imagine a world in which Jaime would not submit to her will in a heartbeat. Even after everything, Brienne can see she still believes it.

“All right,” she says. But she doesn’t leave.

**8\. Jaime**

He sees Cersei’s car. It’s parked in his parking space, next to Brienne’s big ugly truck. A bright red sports car – a newer model than she had before, but he knows her taste anywhere.

His heart stops. His skin springs out in sweat despite the perishing cold. She’s here. Upstairs. She came looking for him.

He has to leave. He’s probably within 500 yards of her right now, and there are cameras all over the building. He has to leave, go somewhere public, get himself an alibi, fast. She’ll tell them that he called her, begged her to come over. She’ll tell them that he raped her.

He thinks about jumping into Brienne’s truck, but he can’t drive it with one hand - it’s a fucking stick shift.

He takes the bag of breakfast and he runs, literally runs, from the parking lot. Feeling like he’s going to puke. Feeling like he’s going to have a heart attack.

He heads for the mall – there’s a million cameras there, a million witnesses. He briefly considers starting a fight, getting himself arrested, but he doesn’t think he can stand to sit in a cell, not even for an afternoon.

He feels sick to think Cersei knows about Brienne. What made him think they could come back to the city? They needed an ocean between them, a continent, a planet. He should have kept her safe.

Himself too. This is what terrifies him most. What would have happened if Brienne had gone out this morning instead of him?

He doesn’t know. He really doesn’t know. If Cersei had come to him, dishevelled and beautiful in her grief. Apologising, kissing him – undressing him, what would he have done?

He’s terrified he would have fucked her.

He wouldn’t. Of course he wouldn’t – it’s gone way beyond that now. But the thought is there, tasting like bile in the back of his throat. She’s there. In their apartment, in their sanctuary, invading and polluting and poisoning.

**9\. Brienne**

Cersei pushes past her, into the apartment. Looking around, taking everything in. 

Brienne is paralysed, clutching the towel to her breasts, conscious they are small, conscious she hasn’t shaved her legs lately.

Cersei goes into the living room, raising an elegant eyebrow at last night’s pizza boxes. She picks up their framed wedding photo – it’s sitting on the coffee table. They are casually dressed, Jaime in a white t-shirt, Brienne in a black one. He’s smiling and she’s laughing her head off at something she can’t even remember.

Cersei’s face is unreadable as she stares at it. Lips parted. Brow twisted. “Did you know I gave Jaime his first orgasm?” she asks, still looking at the photo.

Brienne is dumbstruck. All the hair on the back of her neck stands up. 

“It was all very innocent. Until it wasn’t. A bit of fooling about after school – we were always alone. A bit of kissing and fumbling. Just experimentation really – we’d always done it ever since we were small. But that day I shoved my hand down his pants and touched him like he’d never been touched before – like a man. He begged me not to stop. He came all over my Girl Scout uniform.”

Brienne can’t move. She can’t breathe.

“I love the noise Jaime makes when he comes, don’t you?” Cersei smiles at her. A beautiful, sunny smile. “Does he make that noise for you too? Presuming of course that a great cow like you can make him come. I made him make that sound so many times. Countless. With my hands, with my mouth. With my cunt.”

She puts the photo back down on the table, slowly and deliberately.

“But Jaime’s so stupid. Not once, not in all those years, not in all those decades, did it ever occur to him to wonder how I knew how to do all those things. How I knew how to please a man.”

Then, unexpectedly, she starts to cry.

Her face looks so much like Jaime’s when he cries that Brienne has to fight the urge to comfort her. Cersei looks at Brienne and for a moment, all the haughtiness, all the poison, all the dangerousness melts away from her. She looks like a drowning woman. She looks like Jaime when Brienne first met him.

“My father taught me,” she tells her. Her eyes dark and shrieking in her face. Brienne takes a physical step backwards.

“Jaime didn’t rape me,” Cersei says. “He didn’t abuse me. It was my father. Our father.”

Her green eyes are full of tears and her mouth trembles but suddenly Cersei Lannister pulls it all together. Brienne sees how she does it – it’s a wall, almost impenetrable, of rage and spite and fight. She lifts her chin and gives Brienne a withering look.

“Tell Jaime,” she says. “I need him to know.”

She pushes back past Brienne with a sweep of her stylish fur coat. Walks out of the open front door.

**10\. Jaime**

His phone rings. He fumbles with it – almost drops it. It’s Brienne.

“Where are you?” she asks. Her voice is high, slightly shrill with panic.

“I saw Cersei’s car,” he says.

There is a pause. “Where?” she answers.

“At ours. In my parking space. What did she – what did she want?”

Brienne pauses again. “She didn’t. She didn’t come up.”

Brienne is a terrible liar. He can hear the guilt in her voice a mile off.

“You’d better come home,” she says at last. “I don’t want her to find you.” 

“Brienne –“

“Don’t worry. She must have thought better of it.”

**11\. Brienne**

Brienne waits for Jaime. She’s dressed – jeans and a warm winter jumper. Hair brushed back, make-up free. She can feel her face burning. Burning with the lie, burning from her encounter with Cersei.

He’s going to know. He’s going to know as soon as he sees her. He’s going to smell Cersei’s expensive perfume as soon as he opens the door.

Why did she lie? Brienne is not a liar. Never to Jaime – never. Never.

She tells herself it’s because she wants to protect him. What Cersei told her is horrendous. How can he handle that information? He’s so delicate, so brittle still. His father is dead – Jaime took the blame for all his crimes. What will it change now? What’s the point?

Deep down, though, she knows she did it because she is selfish. There – she said it. She admits it to herself.

If what Cersei said is true, and even if it’s not, she doesn’t want to open a door back to the Lannisters for Jaime. Their hold is powerful, and he’s so fragile. She has to think about herself now. She has to think about their child. Cersei needs to stay the enemy. Cersei needs to stay away.

If Jaime feels sorry for her, if he feels anything other than hate...

**12\. Jaime**

He greets Brienne with a kiss – her eyes are wide and searching his the whole time. He’s light and breezy and smiles. Reassures her that he didn’t see Cersei anywhere. Cersei must have gone home.

He pats her belly. Drops his head to kiss it.

Brienne clears away last night’s pizza boxes, and he attempts to make their breakfast. It’s as annoying as always – he has to ask her to open the packets and slice the bagels for him, but he asks with good humour and a smile on his face. Trying to make her smile. Trying to make her feel safe.

She’s very quiet. She watches him a lot. Endeavouring, he thinks, to decide if he knows.

He knows. Of course he does. He could smell Cersei as soon as he walked in the front door – perfume and furs and the scent of venom. He knew before he got home, but now he’s certain. 

He can see Cersei’s mark on Brienne as well – she’s pale and shell-shocked. No one is ever prepared for how vicious Cersei is, and he can imagine she’s been brutal with Brienne.

He serves her breakfast with a kiss and as she sits down, he shows her the blanket. She takes it with a look of love and wonder, takes his smile and his kiss and his hand on her belly. After they have eaten, she wraps it all around herself, like she needs it for a shield.

**13\. Brienne**

Jaime doesn’t go to the funeral. He does watch it on TV though, the news reports. Brienne watches him watch it carefully, watching him watch as his brother goes into the Sept, then his sister. Then his children. Lions together.

He’s dry-eyed, but solemn. Quiet.

Cersei looks beautiful. Snow in her hair, a long black coat. Her pale delicate fingers on the collar of her daughter’s jacket. Jaime’s face doesn’t flicker as he sees her.

Brienne shudders, though. Cersei is a knife in her gut, a hand at her throat. She feels burned from their encounter, almost scarred. She had to lie. She had to lie to Jaime. She lied and he knows she lied, and he’s just accepted it. It makes Brienne feel sullied, dirty. 

She’s never felt more like a Lannister.

She doesn’t know what to do. She’s thought a few times about reaching out, trying to talk to Cersei. Just talk. But she’d have to lie to Jaime again to do it, she’d have to sneak around behind his back. Cersei would like that. She’d like that a lot.

And if it was a lie, if it was a ploy to get to Jaime – Cersei would have them both right where she wanted them. A wedge of secrets between them, and her there in the middle, pulling all the strings. 

Brienne only has to look at the stump of Jaime’s arm to see what is the worst that could happen.

She can’t risk it. One lie, one secret, is better than a dozen. She bites her tongue and holds the secret til it hurts.

**14\. Jaime**

The next day, he takes her out somewhere beautiful. Out of the city, way up North. A walk in the forest, knee-deep in snow. A visit to a ruined castle. A crumbling wall.

He wants to build their sanctuary again, wants to take her and run, far away. He wants to wrap her up and keep her safe from Lannisters, to be the Tarths again. He’s thinking of a plan. Somewhere to escape to.

Out here in the wild white wilderness, holding hands, he wonders again if Tywin is watching them. He decides that he doesn’t really care.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed another trip out with our favourite angst-ridden couple!
> 
> More to follow ... soon I hope.
> 
> Many thanks to everyone who has been so kind and supportive of this series and who has encouraged me to continue.


End file.
